Stop calling it that. Seriously. It has zero informational value to the outside world. Hell, it has zero informational value even to players who don’t follow forums. For that matter, it has zero informational value on its own. So you’re working on another TU. So what? It’s just another patch. Those who hate/ignore/abandoned the game won’t give a shit about it. You have perfect opportunity to resurrect the game! And what are you doing? Talking to community. While that is great and all, it only keeps the current players. It won’t bring new players. At all.
Therefore I suggest to throw TU9 away and use a punchline that is simple, yet to the point. A punchline that will scream “I’M BACK, BITCHES! STRONGER AND BIGGER THAN EVER!”. Like this:
The hunt has evolved. Evolve 2.0. Coming this summer.
Put it on website. Create teasers on YouTube. Make wallpapers. Enslave gnomes to manufacture little toys for free. Give us material we can share.

At first, the jimmies were slightly rustled, but righted themselves when I read through the whole thing and discovered you weren’t just rageposting. Although the beginning’s a bit hostile, you raise a valid point. I think TU 9 should stay, simply to keep track of everything and offer some way to measure the game’s timeline and progress, but I’ve been wondering why there’s been no more advertising, ESPECIALLY with how TRS wants to convey all the amazing changes that are supposed to be coming up. It just makes no sense NOT to try and get that out there.

Part of me hopes that those “legal problems” are a relaunch of some sort by 2K, but that’s really highly unlikely and I will put zero stock into that. Still, it would be really cool.

The point is it changes way too much to be called just another Title Update. This is suppose to be a fresh start for Evolve. TRS needs to make one big fat line between old and new Evolve and send the old one into oblivion. You can’t start anew when past is hanging around your knees like desperately hungry cat.

I think this would be an excellent opportunity, and while I can see the value in acknowledging the iteration of the game through the TU numbering, I don’t see why it can’t be still known as that for the community and have something a bit more accessible for marketing to new / returning players.

A video / marketing campaign overview of the new, free, adaptations, along with other additions would go a long way to tickling curiosity of people, no question.

However, alas, the context is that they were about to release this TU previously and there was no marketing happening in the lead up to that. Now it could be argued that they needed to wait for a decision on the “legal issues” surrounding the TU and therefore any marketing that was being prepared internally just wasn’t able to be used, but could be so now that there’s at least a date of some time this summer. Fingers crossed!

To be fair… In order to start advertising this kind of thing, you’d need to show actual content to people. You can’t just say “things are gonna change this summer”, because change isn’t always associated with something positive. You need to present people with at least a part of what’s coming, and build from there.

And while they’ve released a few minor titbits, the real content is apparently still behind bars.

Put it on website. Create teasers on YouTube. Make wallpapers. Enslave gnomes to manufacture little toys for free. Give us material we can share.

I asked TRS already what we can do to support them but no answer from them. It seems that they dont care that the fans want to support them. I think Evolve is only the second product, maybe they working on something different now.

Hey guys,
we all love Evolve and this game is still great. Yeah I know some bugs and crashes are awful but the core of the game is great.
So what you guys think can we do, to support Evolve as a game? To make it more famous and increase the playerbase and of course that TRS/2K make more money with this game. And if I say "we" I mean boys and girls who have not a big Twitch or YouTube Channel. So what can the little Man/Women do to support Evolve entire.
My proposals:
Use Twitch, even …

Like I’ve been saying!
There needs to be a rebrand for the new patch. When I mention this, I always imagine it akin to how Taken King is basically Destiny 1.5, and that’s what TU09 needs to be. 2K needs to think of a marketable name for it.
We can still call it TU09 here, but this needs a vision, personality, and brand.

One thing I feel iffy about is advertising the patch on a large scale though. 2K knows how to advertise but if TU09 is not what it is hyped up to be… I’m afraid there will be zero hope for Evolve at that point.

I feel a safer strategy would be to just rebrand Evolve with the patch, and then get people to talk about it(I know, the community already does this, but…), which spreads faster with a new brand to back it up.

While this would be a safer strategy, it might not have the biggest pay off.

There’s so many developers that expect great things to happen to their playerbase just by releasing regular content updates but that’s not how it works.

The only people aware of the upcoming TU9 (or even the micropatch) are those that check the forums extremely often. The ones who just casually play Evolve have no idea and think the game is abandoned at its sorry state. Hell, even the Steam Forum users have no idea.

I laugh at people that expect the playerbase to magically increase after a “huge update”. It won’t happen unless TRS actually gets the word out for once.

They need to do trailers. Promotional materials. Rebrand this title update as “Evolve 2.0” and let gaming reviewers and websites know about this.